Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Poesy

Evasive Action

...the clip ped possessive moment, the barber on his porchcutting his son's hair, who looks for a second straight into the sunand then back at his son's head now a golden, nodulous remnant,a flower if he likes or Lenin's bumpy skull, he puts his scissors downand goes inside and apologizes to his wife, who doesn't understand,but who accepts his words like a private harvest she's storing up,and then the son, who's going into the army, comes in, half cut,and sees them and thinks he understands years of bickering,but doesn't, and goes on to the battlefield where he writes his sistersaying we are not far from the truth of things, watching beyond his handtwo scorpions pick at each other, and thinks of days by the river, of hisfather recovering from cancer, singing a song his grandmother memorized in Vienna and his father, who hated his own mother, cursing her, revoking the song,and the next moment he's blown apart and then sent home in a metal coffinand the parents and the sister get up early on the day of his funeraland eat breakfast silently on the porch, and this is going on barber after barber.- Charles Smith